Memphis Blues

[BT]

March 19, 2007
Uproar Over Memphis Power Broker’s Unpaid Utility Bills
By ADAM NOSSITER
MEMPHIS, March 16 — Everybody has to pay the light bill, an unpleasant maxim lately made even more so here, knowing the powerful do not always observe it.

Month after month, Memphis Light, Gas and Water allowed City Councilman Edmund Ford to forgo paying thousands of dollars in overdue bills without having his power cut. Meanwhile, other prominent politicians — council members, a judge, a state representative — were on a protected list, supervised by a senior utility official, intended to prevent them from having their power cut off in case of nonpayment.

Even the mayor, Willie W. Herenton, was on the list, though Mr. Herenton says he did not know about it and never got any favors. It is not clear that anyone but Mr. Ford was allowed to pile up unpaid bills. Still, the whiff and practice of favoritism — detailed for the last several weeks in the local news media — is upsetting many in a city where nearly a quarter of the people are poor, and the local utility is publicly owned.

Voters here indulge peccadilloes among their politicians, like the occasional indictment or child born out of wedlock. But shielding the powerful from utility bills when many are struggling after a cold winter seems to have pushed public opinion over the edge. The City Council — some members present and past were on the list — has ordered an investigation, as has the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the president of the utility has been called before a federal grand jury.

Some in the political class have been on the defensive for weeks; citizens, meanwhile, are outraged. Outside the utility’s bunkerlike headquarters downtown, some people waiting to pay or dispute their bills had no difficulty identifying who they thought were the victims: themselves.

“I think it is a travesty of the public utility system in the city,” said Ron Johnson, who works with low-income students in the city’s school system. “Memphis is a town in which the poverty rate is high, and you have individuals who could truly benefit from help. And yet you have politicians benefiting on the backs of poor people, and it’s just wrong.”

Mayor Herenton takes a more benign view; he nominated Joseph Lee III, his former finance director, as the president and chief executive of the utility in 2004, and the City Council approved the choice on a 7-to-5 vote. Mr. Ford, who at the time was chairman of the council committee that oversaw the utility’s budget and spending, lobbied heavily for Mr. Lee’s confirmation.

Mr. Herenton recently refused to accept Mr. Lee’s resignation.

“Did he err in judgment in extending credit to Councilman Ford?” the mayor said in an interview. “Of course he did, and he acknowledged he did.”

The mayor pointed out that the list was established before Mr. Lee was installed.

As long lines of weary customers snaked up to the payment counter inside the power company building near Beale Street this week, many people seemed in no mood to consider mere errors in judgment.

“The rest of us are getting jerked around, and jacked around,” said Calvin Lacy, a public school math teacher, who had come in to dispute his $1,300 bill.

“I said, ‘Can I make a payment arrangement?’ And they said, ‘We can’t do that; you’re confused,’ ” he said. “I said: ‘Who’s confused here? Who’s confused?’ ”

Mr. Lacy danced on the pavement, he was so mad.

“I said, ‘Can I get an Edmund Ford deal?’ ” he continued. “They said, ‘We’re truly, truly sorry.’ Well, ‘truly sorry’ ain’t going to get my lights back on.”

Only Mr. Ford, it seemed, could get an Edmund Ford deal. For months, and over a period of years, Mr. Ford, a member of the city’s foremost power-broker political family and uncle of Harold E. Ford Jr., a former congressman and the current chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council, was allowed to put off paying bills at his funeral parlor and home that eventually totaled more than $16,000.

The paper trail shows officials negotiating, cajoling and pleading with, and ultimately excusing Mr. Ford, who was indicted on unrelated federal bribery charges last December.

“Can you give me an update on when we should expect a payment, or will we continue to give him preferential treatment?” one company official wrote to another in an e-mail message last summer, as Mr. Ford’s bills continued to mount.

But the “treatment” went on at E. H. Ford Mortuary Services, on a seedy strip of used-car lots and inexpensive motels on Elvis Presley Boulevard south of downtown, and Mr. Ford was even included in a special program for low-income customers. “Joseph does not want us to cut him off,” another official wrote, apparently referring to Mr. Lee.

Mr. Ford, who did not respond to requests for an interview, recently exploded publicly at his critics in a rambling address to the Council.

“I’ve been slandered and everything else,” Mr. Ford said angrily. “I got stuck with a bill that’s really not my bill.”

He went on: “I struggle every day. Yes, I’m behind on a lot of things. And I ain’t the only one,” adding, “The F.B.I., the one that started it.”

On Thursday, a company auditor, Lesa Walton, solemnly acknowledged at a packed utility board meeting that “Mr. Ford’s accounts were not managed properly” and vowed that he would be made to pay, or get cut off. Furthermore, Ms. Walton said, all politicians would be taken off the list.

Across the street, at the utility bill counter, citizens were fuming; inside the boardroom, where Mr. Lee declined to speak to reporters, executives heard from a local professor who had done a survey that he said showed how well loved Memphis Light, Gas and Water generally was. But some city leaders, publicly critical of the way it is run, have a different view.

“It’s extremely disturbing, because this is not the way it is supposed to operate,” said Councilwoman Carol Chumney. “I don’t believe in treating some people better than others, when they all own the utility.”

Ms. Chumney, a lawyer, is one of the candidates trying to unseat Mr. Herenton — who is seeking a fifth term — in mayoral elections this year. She said she had picked up on widespread anger among voters.

“People are upset,” she said. “We’ve got an F.B.I. investigation, and the president of the utility has lost the confidence of the public.”

The bill payers echoed that view, forcefully. “It’s unfair,” said Micole Pittman, a single mother of two. “We struggle every day to provide for our families, and for them to have easy access to help, that’s very unfair.”

Ekpe Abioto, a musician, said: “From what I’ve seen of the list, they could very well have taken care of their business, and others. From top to bottom, this affects everybody, and it makes you distrust the people who are in power.”


http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/19/us/19memphis.html?ei=5124&en=43f2d70957e12731&ex=1331956800&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink&pagewanted=print

[Brassmask]

Add to this a couple of little tidbits.

The former head of MLGW is a guy named Herman Morris.  The day all this broke wide open was the same day that Herman Morris announced his decision to run for Memphis Mayor.  The alleged "list" of VIP's was actually begun under his administration though he claims never to have used it or given people special treatment.

Second, there was a story recently that MLGW has a surplus of $100million in the bank.  That immediately seemed to answer the question of how Herenton, the current mayor, intends to pay for the new stadium he has said he wants to build to replace the venerable Liberty Bowl.

[The_Professor]

What is the current attitude toward the new stadium? As you know, this sometimes can be a very contentious issue.